We to took away all hope of ever getting ahead in life, and constantly bombard them with extremely successful people parroting "It's literally that easy".
The deadly combination of not being able to afford food/rent and being told that you're just a few tiktoks/onlyfans/hustles away from an independently wealthy lifestyle
Not enough information from the primary example in the article, but I agree that cost of living would be a huge pressure in general. Certainly 20yo and up.
And social media pushes quick fixes rather than the typical long haul of university and steady job towards reaching a comfortable life or at least something that feels like progress.
Well, increasingly that long haul of university and steady job just leads to student debt and being pinched by cost of living increases that outpace the nominal rate of inflation. No wonder people dream about quick fixes - even if or especially because they are a long shot.
Edited to add, it's only worse that a lot of these quick fixes are fraudulent; the van life or trad wife influencers are often recipients of generational wealth to begin with.
So many possible answers are being proposed in this thread that don't seem to take into consideration that the interesting phenomena to explain here is why the increase is specifically high in America.
So far some of the proposals include: the world is teetering on the edge, men are not listened to and social media usage.
I don't see why any of these three things impact Americans disproportionately compared to say to places like Saudi Arabia, Germany and China where suicide in the young is much less than the US.
Given that suicide tends to impact 2x to 3x times more the unemployed than the employed [1], what is truly interesting here in my opinion is that America has an even higher young suicide rate than places with very high youth unemployment such as South Europe or Middle East. My guess it is something to do with culture, family ties and the stigma of not being in work or "productive".
155 comments, and so far, nobody seems to have mentioned a very obvious and well-known difference between America and the rest of the world: Easy access to guns.
Yes, a motivated person will kill himself with or without access to guns, but how could having nearly one in every two households[1] not be at least a factor?
This also breaks down in the gender difference in suicide rates: attempts are quite similar, but method changes the outcome a lot - men in the US are much more likely to shoot themselves.
You're somewhere close to it, I think. Young people in the US have much weaker social support networks than e.g. Southern Europe, and US culture is much more individualistic and atomized than probably anywhere else on Earth.
What I noticed in many countries with traditionally high youth unemployment, say like Egypt or Greece, it is considered normal to be young and unemployed and just living off your family, there wasn't much of a stigma attached to it.
In fact people will declare to you "I live with one of my kids who finished university three years ago and is currently unemployed" with no hint of disappointment, but the situation in some parts of the west and especially the US, people will talk about unemployed university graduates as total losers and embarrassment.
I suspect the tradition that kids move out right after school is a result of countries (in my experience: US and Sweden) having had a lot of unused space, whereas in countries which have always been densely populated, that expectation isn't there.
Great counter-example to what is absolutely the culprit: wealth inequality. However, the ruling class and those who accept their legitimacy will never accept this explanation.
What's different to the war years (hot and cold) is the absence of hope. In those cases there was unity that things were bad and we were all going to fix them.
In our times the answer is 'things are bad and the system is working as intended'.
I read some harrowing pieces about the AIDS epidemic and the hopelessness that came from the dismissal of the rest of the world and it felt similar (worse obviously).
I had hoped that the pandemic might give us a common cause to unite against, and instead I learned that people were unwilling to make the token gesture of wearing a mask and became vaccine deniers (reaching beyond the covid vaccines now). I did not have much hope before then, but I lost essentially all of it after that.
To some extent, certainly. In the US and Western Europe, there was a period of class collaboration or class reconciliation that lasted from the end of WWII to the early 1970s. Labor unions were strong, but were also willing to settle for fairly limited demands and avoid open conflict. The existence of a strong Communist bloc meant that capitalist countries had to treat their workers well enough to win the propaganda war. This detente started breaking down in the 1970s, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all bets were off, leading to the enshittification of capitalist society we see today.
Note that per the CDC[0], suicides are not just higher, they are also significantly higher when normalized by population size, from 10.7 per 100k in 2001 to 14.1 per 100k in 2021.
That's an opinion piece by someone who has made a career out of claiming social media is the cause of teenage depression. He also originally made his name as a political commentator by telling Democrats that the reason they weren't electorally successful is that they weren't racist enough.
I had a thought that maybe increased marijuana use is a factor in this. I did a quick search and there are a quite a few studies and stories on the relationship between marijuana use and suicidal thoughts and attempts. It could also be that people who already have other factors turn to marijuana, which makes it worse instead of better.
I'm sure it's not the only thing, but it is a major change for 20-somethings in the last 10 years or so that they have much easier access to THC products that are extraordinarily potent.
No clear answers? Maybe you should ask some of them. The younger generations are constantly talking about it - while the older generations are constantly talking about it as well, just from a different perspective.
People are tired of capitalism reducing them to numbers that the powers that be -- now corporate interests -- give no shits about.
There's only no clear answers because we're forced to take as axiomatic that suicide is "irrational". Once you stop genuflecting at this truism, and look at how completely stuffed young people are, it makes a whole lot more sense.
I don't know if the rest of the world went for the idea of the "atomic family" like we did, and subsequent disconnection from extended family, but it can't help.
We need to help get some people off their phones and back helping their communities and building local in person relationships that have meaning and impact.
No clear answers? The world is teetering on the edge of world war, young people will never own a home or anything really, wealth inequality continues to get worse, social media is tearing apart the fabric of society, people are constantly inundated with negative news(yes I understand the irony here), among a million other issues. They are right I suppose. There are no clear answers because everything seems fucked.
"The world probably has never been as peaceful as in the last 50 years or so."
So all the defense ministers in europe for example, who urge us to get ready for real war, are paranoid then?
25 years ago it was mostly peaceful, with a steady downward trend since then.
And many people, including government officials, see now a war between china and US as inevitable. That is different from my youth, which was mainly optimistic, with the big players negotiating and demilitarizing.
In the past people who were mostly disinterested in politics and news simply didn’t watch/read the news. Now the news finds them and they don’t have enough of an understanding of civics, economics, and history or the emotional coping mechanisms to know what to do with it.
It’s not that they were fully ignorant of the news in the past, but people used to get most of their “takes” and opinions from like, a weekly editorial column or Sunday paper or something that would sort of bubble up through various cultural filtering mechanisms. By the time it got to your typical 17 year old it has already gone through a “processing mechanism” where it’s been analyzed, contextualized, better understood. They’re not getting the messy information in raw form.
Now they get the raw information as it happens, and often bubbling up from agenda driven activists instead of disinterested analysts. Consequently, everything has a heavy emotional charge and is specifically geared to short circuit the rational mechanisms for understanding things and hit you in the lizard brain. The lizard brain is good for quick thinking and rapid reactions, but it’s not very good at emotional regulation, priority setting, or any of the other stuff that’s conducive to mental health.
> The world probably has never been as peaceful as in the last 50 years or so.
True, but we are not talking about the last 50 years, we are talking about the future, for example, the next 5 years. People don't commit suicide if they think their future will be OK.
> Same goes for access to drinkable water, food, decent shelter, gender equality, freedoms, technology, etc.
- Item 2 and 3 ignore recent rises in food prices and housing prices.
- For the U.S., item 4 and 5 have been reduced in many places by various recent laws and judicial decisions (unless you are super rich), and this will probably continue for the near future.
- The last item - 6 - technology. I think for a non-tech-person standpoint, it really appears like technology primarily has ...
A) ... stagnated. Phones--the tech most people use daily--haven't done anything new and exciting for some time. The Internet hasn't given the non-tech public-at-large the next big thing after social media, either.
B) ... primarily become interested in putting monthy fees, ads and tracking on everything one does, and
That may be correct -- depending on the degree to which you agree with Pinker's (I assume) interpretation of statistics. But it probably does not reflect the reality of the people contemplating or committing suicide. They may also not care if things are _objectively_ better when things subjectively suck for them.
But, very few people people commit suicide purely in response to their despair concerning the state of the world. There are almost always deeper mental health issues involved. And as strange as it sounds, suicide goes in and out of fashion as well. In general, it's very difficult to drill down on causality of suicide rates.
It seems like you’re vaguely alluding to global averages when most commenters are lamenting the state of their own countries, communities, daily lives - a categorical error.
Scale & locality can’t be hand-waved away.
"the world" probably doesn't mean that much to a 25-30 year old American's personal morale; I don't see why it should
Like, I'm sure someone in Flint a few years ago wouldn't begrudge more people having access to drinkable water but they're obviously going to be massively unhappy about having to consider the possibility of no longer having access to it themselves.
Ironically, suicide rates are typically fairly low among people dealing with actual existential problems. Depression is not very prevalent until all basic needs are taken care of.
Imagine how all the millions of warfighters over the last few decades in the middle east feel about this hysteria. And pretty much the best 98% of Americans could do was a flag sticker and a yawn.
But their phone says this is different, so they believe it. Mission Accomplished.
Water with micro plastics and availability under threat due to climate change. Some places are already feeling it.
Food that’s hyperpalatable, full of sugar, and devoid of nutrition. Case-in-point, the obesity crisis.
Sure technology is great but the internet has fucked our brains. The tech industry repeatedly creates hype bubbles like crypto to make a buck. And don’t even get me started about AI.
Gender equality is far from resolved for both men and women. Women still have to deal with harassment and men are now expected to fulfill contradictory roles of being both a progressive feminist and a traditional masculine man.
Sure things are great when you oversimplify and ignore the bad parts.
About as many people as die in road traffic incidents every year in the USA, basically completely preventable, and nobody (media, congress, president, policial candidates) are kicking up a fuss about that. 47k estimated in 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/192575/road-traffic-fata...
The parent is intentionally conflating the last 2 years with the prior 5 decades. Right now there is a war going on, of a magnitude not seen since WW1 and WW2.
Yeah, things are better than ever in most metrics, but this is also the issue with metrics. Those same metrics do not cover two current wars that involve nuclear powers and the risk of these two wars becoming global conflicts. Those metrics do not cover increasing atomization of human societies and the impact of increased atomization on the human social animal. Those metrics do not cover human exposure to sunlight, clean air, clean water, and other health factors. Likewise, humans have a tendency to focus on risks and negatives rather than celebrating wins as a product of evolutionary pressure.
Yes, the person you’re replying to reminds me of those guys on Twitter who selectively quote stats to try and prove that people are doomers and things are actually good.
There are so many things that statistics don’t cover it’s unreal.
One thing that especially comes to mind is that many of the illusions of society have been shattered by the younger generations. Things like believing you should be loyal to your employer because they’ll return the favor.
> "Things like believing you should be loyal to your employer because they’ll return the favor."
Nobody's believed that since, I'd say, the 1970s-1980s. Even Japan, famous for its culture of lifetime employment, phased that out in the 1990s. It's ridiculous to suggest that that's a new phenomenon.
Surely you jest. Coasting and resting-and-vesting have been around longer than most of the people reading this site have been alive. That some influencers and hack journalists rebranded it to quiet quitting and marketed it as the trendy thing to do does not remotely make it a new phenomenon.
No i don’t jest. Coasting and rest-and-vest have a completely different vibe than quiet quitting. The former is more like “fuck it”, whereas the latter is more like “fuck you”.
Burying your head in the sand is definitely more comfortable, as is repeating stats. But if you live in the same reality as everyone else and are paying any attention whatsoever, seems hard to believe that you wouldn't take notice of the Russian war in Ukraine, Israel's attack on Gaza, tensions heating up between Israel & its neighbors, Switzerland holding a vote on whether or not to remain a neutral company in the event of a war, Russia & China constantly attacking countries' computer & physical infrastructure, etc.
Your platitudes do nothing to make up for the fact that wealth inequality is worse than it has ever been many times over. The cruel and unusual experience of such exploitation and social contortions faced by those at the bottom will always undermine your pathetic attempts to legitimate such ignorance.
The quality of life of the poorest members of society is also much higher than it has ever been, indeed, much higher than historical kings and lords.
Unfortunately, people do tend to be happier if they're miserable among other miserable people, than if they were living comfortably among people with cooler things than them.
Your first point conflicts with your second. Maybe work on that.
It is very well understood across all relevant metrics that younger people are less economically secure than their parents. Coupled with extreme and growing wealth inequality, this is bound to be a political problem whether you like it or not. And, these suicide numbers suggest it may be a serious psychological problem as well. Your platitudes don't change that.
Feudalist societies were not organized by wealth but rather by roles that people were essentially born into. These roles were not achieved but rather understood as basically granted by god. Just as kings had divine rights, people had god-given qualities and understood themselves as having inherent and inherited positions in society, which effectively eliminated all of the social pressure and unusual contortions experienced by subjects under capitalism, even at the level of peasants. So-called fairness as we understand it today was not even a coherent concept at the societal level. Peasants owned nothing but also had far more freedoms and access to resources, which were eventually deemed property as humans entered into capitalism, which forced peasants into capitalist production as workers.
To understand the differences between feudalism and capitalism, you must also understand the conflict between the feudalist aristocracy (god-given) and the capitalist bourgeoise (industrious accumulators of capital). This conict was really the source of the shift to capitalism. The aristocracy could not compete with the capitalists as the capitalists promoted a story of mobility by accumulating capital. Of course, however, only a few can achieve that, and they basically still argue that their abilities are god-given. But the claim about abilities and hard work paying off vs. simple i herited permanent roles results in a much more damaging psychology.
And telling young people that they're crazy for noticing these things isn't going to help either. I'm not old, but I can't call myself young anymore, and I understand now that if I live to a reasonable life expectancy, I'm probably going to see some shit. I can't imagine tacking on a decade or three to that; I used to envy children born after me for the advances they'd live to see, but now I feel nothing but sorrow for them, and I'm so relieved that I never had any.
Never mind those looming clouds or that biting breeze that just picked up, it's been sunny for a whole week -- it's sure to last forever this time! /s
Those last 50 years were a side effect from one of two global powers catastrophically collapsing. The tensions that drive modern history didn't dissolve when that happened, they were just tabled as numerous contending powers with their own visions of the world reorganized and regrouped. Maybe we can all diplomatically navigate our way past the worst outcomes along the way, but the next 50 years simply aren't going to look like the last 50.
> The world probably has never been as peaceful as in the last 50 years or so.
oh jeez, say that to the people of Palestine or the Congo. people who make these blanket generalizations are either tone deaf or come from a place of privilege.
Anyone who says that isn't aware of how many wars there used to be. See[1] and look at the countries and regions involved, and how in this century it's down to a very very few regions. Since WWII, Europe has been incredibly peaceful after centuries of invasions, border conflicts, revolutions, empires rising and falling.
Pointing to one thing going wrong so you can call people 'privileged' doesn't change it. Nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), NATO, the EU, the USA, the generally calm dissolution of the British/French/Spanish empires, the end of new lands to find, has stabilised a lot.
How come then that the suicide stats for teens in Europe seem much better, given their closer proximity to the supposed hotspot of the recent conflict?
Kids spend too much time thinking about social issues that they are not ready to deal with because they are used as pawns in the culture wars or manipulated to feel like they need to consume more. Society has a responsibility to stop manipulating our children and giving them problems they have control over and can deal with. In plain english: stop telling kids to fix global warming and that they need plastic surgery and start telling them to clean their room and prepare healthy meals for themselves. Help them feel like they have control over their own lives and their environment and they will stop killings themselves.
> There are no clear answers because everything seems fucked.
Doom and despair sells like hotcakes. Stop consuming so much media, you’re too valuable, and way more than some addiction pushing tech corporation’s product.
It is simply a fact that wealth inequality is worse than it has ever been many times over. Those at the bottom know this first hand. They dont need media to tell them.
That stuff is peanuts compared to the 1960s-1980s certainty of World War III and all of civilization being nuked into glowing cinders (a well justified fear after two world wars with tens of millions of deaths and major cities bombed to rubble preceded by decades of war after war before that between major powers), wealth inequality (yeah, it was incredibly bad back then too), bad economy (e.g. the stagflation and oil crisis of the '70s), and pollution (ah, the sweet smell of exhaust from leaded gasoline literally everywhere, how I don't miss it, and don't forget rivers catching on fire from industrial pollution).
Mate, you don't even know what "fucked" (quoting the parent post) looks like.
The generation this article is concerned about killing themselves didn't live during that time. They have no frame of reference for how things were worse back then and are better now. The only thing they now is that things are bad now.
In fact, saying that "we had it way worse" is probably a sentiment that leads to people stuffing their feelings because "what do I have to complain about" until it gets to the point that they off themselves.
Things in the 20th century were fucked, but almost everyone believed at a bone-deep level that things were getting better. That whatever problems society was facing would eventually be solved, and that for individuals, there was a path to improving their lives. Even dissidents who didn't believe in their society's mythologies believed that a better world was possible.
Young people today don't have that belief. And they're probably correct. Our society is visibly committed to not solving any of the problems facing it, and the levers of decision-making are very clearly out of the hands of anyone who cares about solving them.
I'm of the opinion empathy and consideration is finite, so when you spread it to larger and larger collections of people it becomes too diffuse, and the ones most closest to us (friends, loved ones, people in the community, etc.) do not receive it sufficiently.
Likewise, none of us are in any position to do anything at all about this issue, but armchair theorize and feel moved by it for a few minutes -- as well as have our perception of the world tilted negatively (for what purpose?).
I should really go for a walk, instead of absorbing this junk food.
A lot of historians are drawing parallels between recent events and the events leading up to WW1. I’m not an expert, but it isn’t absurd to say that it could happen.
What? If they could have predicted the severity of WWII, Chamberlain and the rest wouldn't have tried to appease Hitler or delay.
Predicting the severity of events in advance is difficult. I wouldn't listen to what historians predict today. Every catastrophe is different, but despite this people like to pretend (after the fact) all the signs were there and were obvious.
For all we know Ukraine will stay confined and China will just keep being belligerent but take no action.
TSMC controls 60% of global semiconductor production, not "90%+." If your argument is: "well, they control the advanced nodes!!" - if Taiwan is attacked, the things you're using these advanced chips for will no longer be relevant.
Missiles and radar powered by Intel/Altera chips will do the job just fine until more domestic fab capacity can be spun up. Most defense products are running on processes from two decades or more ago and are already legally forced to consider adversarial supply chain issues.
2. "the things you're using these advanced chips for will no longer be relevant", "Missiles and radar powered by Intel/Altera chips will do the job just fine until more domestic fab capacity can be spun up." Hard-disagree. US advantage is in high resolution AESA sensors, thermals, and fast advanced processing and comms. We aren't talking Tomahawks and PESA radars when it comes to competitive advantage.
Finally, there is a reason why domestic fab capacity is ramping up slowly in the US and Russia doesn't have such capability to speak of - it's hard and the major powers are behind.
Which defense contractor is using a sub-10nm process node for products? Every F35 chip is >90nm.
Which adversary would these chips yield an advantage against in a nuclear war?
Domestic fab capacity is ramping up slowly because these facilities are multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade endeavors. Intel's existing domestic fabs can make everything a war-fighting nation could need, capacity and capability-wise.
If true, and I have no reason to doubt you based on the accuracy of your previous messages, you have made your point. I definitely don't know the F-35 chip specs.
> Recent Armenia vs Azerbaijan (supported by Turkey) war. More tension on border.
I completely missed the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict, but from what I can tell, tensions there don't seem likely to pull many other countries into it. Curious if you have thoughts on that.
> Posturing in Africa by Russia, France, and China.
Can you explain why this would lead to a potential world war? Most of what I can find about this is foreign countries vying for economic influence, which seems unlikely to burst into conflict, especially one that would become a world war.
See what BirAdam said - he is correct. Armenia / Azer is a direct cause of Russia being drawn into Ukraine, insofar that Russia "guaranteed" peace and had a contingent of "peacekeepers" in Armenia. What you see is an acceleration on conflicts in areas that were held back by global stability before. Now that Russia couldn't react, Azer backed by Turkey (and arguably other powers in the West) pushed Armenia out of Nagorny Karabakh. If Russia wasn't in Ukraine, this would likely look like Georgia in 2008 where Russia would use this as an excuse to take some land. Instead they did nothing, because they are busy.
Africa is too much to summarize - basically look into what Wagner and US PMCs were doing there. It's just more proxy conflict.
To support this, all of these proxy wars have covert units by the major nuclear powers conducting efforts directly against the other side. If these are ever exposed directly, political pressures will likely escalate the war. The moment one side starts to lose decidedly, nuclear war will likely occur.
I also don't know what a world war looks like in the nuclear age. Proxy wars are bad enough, to be sure, but a world war seems difficult when many nations can glass the planet.
We were closer to nuclear war in the 1960s and 1970s than we are today. Sure we don’t have it as good as they did in the ‘90s and 2000s but you wouldn’t know it from the depression and anxiety stats over time, which suggests that the geopolitical situation isn’t the main driver here.
I'm pretty sure that the research showing the risk of nuclear winter being exaggerated is specifically intended to make nuclear war "thinkable" in a way it wasn't towards the end of the Cold War. It's one small part of a broader trend in elite consensus-making over the last 10 years or so. As a member of the Posadist 4th International, I approve, of course.
Among other things, perhaps the recent bombing of the Iranian section of a consulate in Damas, Syria by Israel, to which Iran responded by war threats.
I did in fact miss this, thanks. I'm not as convinced by other commenters' references to Putin's nuclear threats, but the Middle East erupting into a broader conflict with the US joining in seems at least somewhat plausible to me. Another comment mentioned the potential of the US entering a war in defense of Taiwan, which also seems quite plausible to me given China really wants Taiwan back and Taiwan is much more critical to the US than, say, Ukraine.
What should they do to be taken seriously? Just hit the Washington D.C once?
On the other hand, do you really think any nuclear power, be it Russia, USA, China, would allow being defeated in an existential war and just dissolve without bringing down the whole world?
There is a more than likely chance that China will invade Taiwan by 2030 and US will possibly intervene to stop that slaughter. Is that fear mongering?
Yes. There's no source, no nuance, no justification, no explanation, no analysis, no hope, no details, it's as pure a jolt of dense negative emotion in one sentence as you can manage. You're choosing emotionally charged words like 'slaughter'. You're speculating that something halfway around the world will involve the reader's home country, because that makes it feel closer and more scary. It's absolutely fearmongering.
So if someone https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1473362460673515527 told Ukrainians in 2021 that they were going to be invaded by Russia, which would mean 100,000+ of them killed and maimed, would you also say they were "fear mongering?"
There were many people on HN, like you, the Russian government, and Snowden literally saying people were "fear mongering" because they were warning about the fact of the Russian invasion.
Do you have any evidence or track record to support your position? Any Russian invasion predictions you called successfully? If not, I'd leave dismissals of current US Gov. understanding of the situation to the full time geo-pol pro's who do successfully predict things.
"FEARMONGERING meaning: 1. the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary"
> "told Ukrainians in 2021 that they were going to be invaded by Russia, which would mean 100,000+ of them killed and maimed, would you also say they were "fear mongering"
Maybe, this depends if they were commenting with good evidence because they were trying to get Ukranians to fight or escape, or if they were commenting because they wanted to make Ukranians afraid. The Ukrainian government saying "imminent invasion, 100,000+ of us will die, here's what we need to be doing" might not be fearmongering, Russia saying "we're imminently invading, 100,000+ of you will die" might be fearmongering. Americans telling each other "Russia will invade Ukraine, 100,000+ people will die, the world is ending, mass slaughter!, NATO will fall, Europe is history! Russia will move onto Georgia and then Poland!" absolutely would be fearmongering.
> "Do you have any evidence or track record to support your position?"
My position is that your comment is fearmongering. My evidence is your comment.
> "If not, I'd leave dismissals of current US Gov. understanding of the situation to the full time geo-pol pro's who do successfully predict things."
I'm not dismissing US Gov understanding of the situation, I'm criticising your fearmongering echoing of things. Do you have any track record of helping stop China invading Taiwan? If not, stop spreading fear for upvotes and leave the warfare preparations to the pros.
Ah, then your position falls apart. The more people would've been aware of Russia's plans for Ukraine, the earlier and better a formidable defense could've been. Same in as in Taiwan. That requires people understanding what the future possibly holds and how to deter the worst case.
HN readers being scared of 'slaughter' in Taiwan, with no source and no explanation of the claim, is 'necessary'? It going to help mount a formidable defense?
Do you have any evidence or track record to support your position?
You're not helping your point by not making any substantive argument. The same full time think tank analysis that predicted the Russian invasion by months is also predicting the same here. Your track record is worse unless you can point me to any coverage of the impending Russian invasion you have...
Helping either side will still kill people, and likely kill more people, and likely lengthen the war.
The USA should not involve itself in the affairs of others. Period. It’s just a modern form of colonialism where the UsA views itself as superior and a possessor of all knowledge and goodness and therefore the rest of the globe needs its help. This is not the case.
You should read Leviathan and World Order. When order breaks down, it opens up short term opportunistic destruction instead of correctly resolving the prisoners' dilemnas. See the Azerbaijani assault on Nagorno-Karabakh for what happens when Russia doesn't have the focus to maintain order. The US got a lot of shit for not preventing the Rwandan genocide. But according to you, nonintervention was a good thing.
we’ve been here before though, circa ww1, the Great Depression, ww2 etc etc.
the only difference is how much of what is going on is amplified today, compared to the past.
I would rather say - constant comparation to those who show themselves as dapper/beautiful/rich/crazy on social media. There are a lot of psychology papers on social media's influence on a young mind.
In the graph in the article you'll notice a steady increase since 2000 and that since the vaccine was rolled out there hasn't been an out of character change, beside the initial drop in suicides.
I think it's referring to the idea that men (in general) are lonely, never get compliments, and told to man-up if they open up in any way. That men are taught to suffer alone and not complain. When they do they get ostracised.
I don't think that is really relevant tbh, if anything this is recognised more and men _are_ encouraged to open up more etc.
Playing devil's advocate here but do you think men are listened to when they complain say in China, Saudi Arabia or Germany where suicide in the young is much lower?
It takes a certain level of hacker newsiness to see increasing suicide rates and come to the conclusion thing things aren't that bad people are just overreacting to bad data.
Americans are the most privileged people on earth. They have the highest pay, they have the highest ability to climb the social ladder, they never have to be afraid to be conscripted and sent to war, they’ll never see a bomb go off on their home soil, they don’t have to fear Putin or China invading them. Are non-Americans supposed to feel bad for these privileged people?
In my very subjective opinion, we are reaching a question of what is the meaning of life when you essentially have most of what you need. Outside of religion, many people don't have a reason to live for, except pursuing even more wealth/goods/comfort. And if they don't believe that's possible for themselves, living in mediocrity becomes a depressing, routine grind for many.
Damn it feels good to be an American. If you’re a Buddhist, then you can interpret the privilege as a sign that most Americans were good people in their past lives too! They earned it!
A nation of mostly good karma. Can you believe it? Really rustles the “I hate my country because we are colonizers” crowd like Howard Zinn - especially when you look to the religious beliefs of the people in those conquered countries (I.e Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam)
Uh… growing up in America isn’t all gravy. I grew up near a uranium enrichment facility and toxic waste dump and have lifelong health issues from that. I also have known an unusually high number of people who died way too early from very rare cancers as a result. I also watched the city I lived in set on fire with riots. Friends of mine have been murdered. My story isn’t unique, nor are the conditions. Having more money or more access to credit doesn’t magically make everything better, it can actually just hide some of the problems a bit better for a much longer period of time.
They come here because America has made a far worst hellscape of their homeland through extreme resource extraction and coups. Western extractive capitalism strip mines the Global South of all local wealth leaving the local population in extreme poverty.
The deadly combination of not being able to afford food/rent and being told that you're just a few tiktoks/onlyfans/hustles away from an independently wealthy lifestyle